PrintNovember 26, 2007
'Redacted Has no Impact
The latest anti Iraq war propaganda movie that Americans refuse to see, [A]udiences are really avoiding “Redacted," De Palma's picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family.
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"Redacted" - which “could be the worst movie I've ever seen," said critic Michael Medved -took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country. “This, despite an A-list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, The New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc.
Throwing all pretense of objectivity to the winds at taxpayer and listener supported National Public Radio, critic David Edelstein blessed the film with a twisted prayer.
The reviews have been terrible, even from the director's champions. The defense -- that's me -- will concede almost every point. The movie is heavy handed and punishing, the acting stilted, but I think of it as a charcoal sketch of a movie, something scribbled furiously out of the director's sense of outrage and impotence.
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(But)I think it represents, along with many recent and imperfect films, from "In the Valley of Elah" to "Rendition" to "Lions for Lambs," a laudable, artistic response to an unpopular war.
DePalma and Edelstein can't seem to understand Americans view these"laudable artistic responses," as not quite laudable but boring, not really artistic but elitist and especially not a response but a piece of propaganda, especially on Thanksgiving weekend, . But don't shed any tears for the directors and stars of these bombs; though some may have lost their homes in the Malibu fire their movies are sure to improve the American balance of trade as the hate-America-first-unless-we-need-their-help-overseas crowd will gleefully patronize them in droves.
